Guide to Becoming a Full-Time Content Creator

I hear you want to be a full-time content creator. Great, let's do it because you are not too late, you are right on time, you are right where you need to be for your journey. This video is going to teach you how you're going to become a full-time content creator. As always, timestamps are below, use them if you need them, grab a pen, piece of paper, let's get into it. Step one, know the plan. You would be surprised how many people skip this step. The reason we start with this is because it's the obvious key to reverse engineering your path to success. Like if you know you want to be a food taste tester, you know exactly the type of content to study and create instead of mindlessly following trends that aren't going to get you to where you want to be. So how do you gain this sort of clarity? How do you figure out what type of creator that you want to be if you don't already know, AKA your personal brand, if you will. Before you start posting like crazy, know what your end goal is. You know, the whole like start with the end in mind. So take a moment to ask yourself. these questions. What's the dream? Not what do you think you should do or have to do? No, what is the dream in a perfect world? What do you want to be known for as a creator in the next three years? What path would you pursue if you knew you couldn't fail? If you have an answer, let me know in the comments. I'd love to create a space where we encourage each other on this journey. And if you don't have an answer, that's fine. Feel free to pause this video, write those questions down and journal about them if you need. I try to make sure that that with every tip that I give you in this video, you will also get a takeaway or you'll be able to take action immediately after watching the video. So journaling could be that first action that you could take. But basically this is something that I start all of my students with, getting clarity on the goal. Because with most of them, deep down, they know exactly what they want to do. But for some reason there's overthinking happening, or maybe they heard advice somewhere that contradicts their dreams. So they try to Try to change things up and do something else because they feel like they have to do something else. But you have to trust that your gut desires and intuition will lead you to the right path. And if for some reason you still have no idea what sort of creator you want to be, you just know like deep down you have that desire to become a creator, you have to be somebody who is willing to take action without that clarity. Be willing to create content without having a plan in place. I know this video is literally me breaking. down a plan, but if having some sort of perfect plan in place is literally the thing that is stopping you from creating and moving the needle forward, you have to be okay with not having a plan and just starting anyway. I feel like those are the two common creators that I see. Usually it's students who they know exactly the creator they want to be, so creating that plan feels really natural to them. That's typically what I teach because again having a plan is great, it helps you reverse engineer your goals. other hand, there are students who genuinely have no idea how they want to show up, how they want to be a creator in the space. And that's okay too. If you fall into that category, you have to understand that you will probably be a person who needs to take action before you gain clarity. Whereas this category, these are the people that they have clarity and it helps them take action. You might be in the other category where action will bring the clarity. All right, let's jump to step two, set yourself up for success. this could be where you start to prepare your income stream. Again, this is another one that a lot of people skip because they want to get to like the good stuff, the growth hacks, the secret viral tips, and they just wanna blow up, go viral. But if you want to become a full-time creator, literally all you have to do is spend maybe a day doing this one thing, and it could save you a lot of time and money in the future. And that's by either starting an email list or starting with creating a digital product of some sort. sort. Why is this important? I'll talk a little bit about to the email list importance and also digital product importance. I had a student who came to me and she was like, I want to hit 10,000 followers on Instagram. And I was like, great, let's do it. Let's start an email list. It took her less than a day to set up her freebie and email list. It was that simple. What is a freebie? What is an email list? Basically a freebie is some sort of free offer that you give to your audience completely for free. The only thing that you ask for an exchange is their email address. So as somebody downloads this free offer that you have for them, them. In exchange, you get a list of email contacts that you own, not controlled by any sort of algorithm, which is super powerful these days with all the craziness through social media, people's accounts getting hacked. I had my YouTube channel hacked. You can watch that video here, how I got it back. You never know what can happen to your social platforms. And that's why it's so important to start growing your email list from zero because as your account grows and as your social media grows, your email list also grows. So many people are fearful. With this whole TikTok ban stuff that is happening, there's so many creators who might be losing their platforms, or if they have an email list, they still have their community, a list of email contacts that they own, they could contact their people, let them know, hey, I'm gonna be on this platform, hey, I'm dropping a digital product is just such an important thing to have as a creator. And I know you might not see it now. But trust me, trust me, it's so simple. to set up. I'll show you how to do that in a second. And then same thing with the digital product. If you want to be a full-time content creator, if you're somebody who already knows the type of creator that you want to be, you can create a paid digital product of your choice. It could be an ebook guide. templates, mini trainings, mini course, or full course. Like you can make a digital product now, get that set up so that when you blow up, when you start creating content, when you start getting traffic to your profile, your link in bio, you're getting sales passively because you already set up the systems to make money. I have my computer pulled up. I'm going to quickly show you how to create either a free resource or a paid digital product really quickly to help you come up with an idea for a free resource or a paid digital product. Simply look at your competitors. or your niche neighbors, see what sort of things they're offering. What do they offer for free? What do they offer that's paid? Can you offer something similar and have your own twist to it? So study people in your audience. If that doesn't work for you, I like to use Pinterest. You can literally go to Pinterest and type in your niche. So if you are a travel creator, I usually do fitness as an example. I'm going to say, if you're a travel creator, you know, that's the niche you want to be. You want to figure out what sort of offer you can create in that niche. Just go to Pinterest, type in travel, and then see what sort of suggestions happen below. I think travel essentials already. That would be a great free resource, a list of travel essentials. Let's see how other people phrase the title. Essential solo travel packing list. Perfect. That's a great idea for a free resource. I am going to go to Canva. Canva is completely free. I'm going to look up in their templates. They have all sorts of templates. If you want to make an ebook or a guide, literally just look up ebook. e-guide. They have plenty of templates there, but because the free resource we're going to be creating is a travel checklist. I'm just going to see if they have already something made. Oh, wonderful. Wow. All these are great. You're going to pick one that does not have the crown. The crown means that it's pro, so you'd have to pay to use it. But these look like these are free versions. And then you just open it. You customize the template. You change the branding to your branding. And of course you make sure it's your idea. You're going to actually maybe fill in the blanks. maybe give suggestions, maybe add a cover page. That's the title page and intro to you page. You know, you're going to customize it to make it your own. When you're done, you're going to download it. You're going to save it as a PDF, and then you're going to download that PDF. Now, how do you get it set up to actually offer to people? How do people download it? How do you get to that exchange of email? How does somebody buy a digital product from you? I personally prefer to use Stan. Stan is what I recommend to all of my students, all creators. Everybody in the entire world literally loves Stan. I've been obsessed with them for like two years now. I wish it existed when I started as a creator because it's the only tool you need to make money as a creator. It's fan-freaking-tastic. So you're gonna go to your store. You're going to scroll down. add a product, and this is where you could choose the type of product that you're going to offer. If you are selling a digital product, choose digital product because here is where you could choose the price, how much to charge for it. If you are not selling and it's a free resource, then what you're going to choose is collect emails applications. So this is where you could change the cover image, the title of your free resource, and under product, this is where you'll drop your file, publish. Boom shakalaka literally took you less than a day to create a product and upload it to a really low tech place for you to offer it to your audience. This video is sponsored by Stan, but I genuinely don't think I have to say much about them. I feel like their product sells itself. And as a creator, if you saw that screen recording, you're like, oh my gosh, that's awesome. That's so valuable. Then definitely use them. I'll leave a link down below where you can set up your stand store. That is all I'll say because their product speaks for itself, period. Now I know I did go over those steps a little bit faster. That's because I'm trying to get through all the steps to become a full-time creator. So if you want something a little bit more slow paced to show you like how to properly create, market, and sell a digital product. I'll leave a link to this video here. It is a more in depth tutorial that teaches you all the steps that I breezed right over. So obviously this is a great step to do if you already have an idea of the type of creator that you want to be. And if you don't and you're like, I don't even know my niche, how am I gonna pick a product? That's fine, skip this step if you really need to. Again, I don't want perfectionism mindset to stop you from moving the needle forward. But as soon as you have that aha moment where you've been creating and you're like, okay, I think I found my lane, come back and do this step. before popping off before going viral because that's really what's going to help you and your income grow together as a creator. Step number three, let's talk about creating content. You know your vision. You now have a way to make money or keep track of your audience via email lists. So now it's time to start creating. There's a lot that goes into it. creating, coming up with content ideas, scripting, outlining, filming, editing, getting the video ready to post and then posting it. So I just want to quickly in my own rapid fire, probably I yap a lot. So we'll see how rapid fire this is. of my biggest tips for creators who are looking to go full-time. Let's start with ideation. When it comes to trying to come up with content ideas, there are so many ways to come up with different content ideas, but you have to understand that different posts will provide a different purpose. And if you want to grow, you need to focus on creating growth content. Now there are two main ways that I've tested. My students have tested and have proven time and time again to help with growth. And those are SEO and utilizing your niche neighbors. There's a few reasons that SEO works wonders. SEO, if you don't know, stands for search engine optimization. That's a fancy schmancy definition, search engine optimization. Basically, it just means you're gonna use the search engine on whatever platform you're trying to grow on as a tool to help you predict what your audience wants to see. You're just using the search engine as a tool. That's pretty much it. Let me show you how to do it very, very simply. If I'm on YouTube and I wanna grow on YouTube, you could do this on any platform. It doesn't have to just be YouTube. But if I wanna make yoga. videos, switched niches. First I was in travel, now I'm in yoga. If I want to make yoga videos, all I have to do is type in yoga. Again, we kind of did this already with Pinterest, but now we're doing it for coming up with content ideas. And this is going to tell us what the top searches are on YouTube right now. What are people searching for when it comes to yoga? This. So I'm just scanning these suggested results to see if there's anything that makes sense for me to post. Again, we want to make sure it makes sense with our goals and who we want to be as creators. So yoga for beginners. Love that. That is a really good idea. Yoga for toddlers, interesting. I'm just gonna type in a random letter and see what the rest of the suggested results are. Yoga stretch, full body stretch, that's a good idea. So yoga full body, that could be a video. Yoga sculpting, strength building with yoga, that could be another video. So all these are video suggestions. Same thing with TikTok. If I go here and I type in running, anything that is suggested, video idea. It's telling us what our audience wants to see right now. And that's why following this method could help us increase views because your audience wants to see this. So you're just going to make a video on it. Boom, shakalaka. Not only are you pleasing your audience, but you're also pleasing the algorithm. Now, if you really want to take it a step further, you can create an entire series around one of these phrases. So these phrases, if you want to get fancy, these are keyword phrases. And these are phrases that the algorithm actually studies to figure out who to put your content out to. So it'd be cool if you did like 20 day running challenge series for beginners or like 10 days of top running tips for beginners. Boom. Then you have a series of 10 videos that are all about running for beginners. And you're really nailing that phrase over and over. So the algorithm knows the type of content you're creating. And if one of those videos pops off, the rest of the series has a really great chance to grow. The other way to come up with post ideas that you know will perform well is by analyzing your competitors or niche neighbors. Basically, you're just going to go to that person's profile and you're going to look at two things that you're going to look at their latest viral post. And when I say... viral, I just mean viral for them. What posts are performing above their average? So I'm just scrolling, looking to see what his average is. It looks like this one performed well above his average. Scrolling down, even like anything over 20,000 looks like it would be a viral for him. So this one, this one, this one, this one, this one's pretty close. So I'm going to study those videos. I'm going to figure out why did they blow up? Was it the topic? Was it the hook? How it was filmed? Let me see his caption. What is he talking about? talking about how to breathe while running. So maybe I want to create a video similar giving tips for how to breathe while running. This one obviously worked well because he's also running at the beginning, hooking people into the video, how to start running. That's a great one for beginners. So just look at your competitors, see what is performing well recently for them. Second thing that you could look at is sort by popular. You could do this on TikTok and YouTube. This filter is not available on Instagram, I don't think. So you just have to stalk the person and see what is like their most viral videos. And based off of their most popular ones, I would try to adapt my own strategy to a recent popular one. If it was popular and this is like a 10 year old video or like a five year old video, okay. It's within the past year. This could be something that I would want to lean into, try to recreate on my own. When it comes to filming, let's talk about gear first and then strategy. For gear, you really don't need anything fancy. Anytime I film short form content, 95% of the time when I'm filming short form content, I'm just using my phone. and the microphone that came with my phone. You know, like I'm not using a fancy mic, I'm not using a fancy camera or anything. Most of the time, I'm just using my phone. I've had three people in the last month, literally the last 30 days, come to me and be like, all right, I wanna take this content. creation thing seriously. What microphone should I buy? What mic goes well with my phone? And I'm like, honestly, your phone mic is pretty fine. Or if you have like Apple headphones for voiceover, that works great. Instead, what I encourage students to do, start with what you have. And then set a goal for yourself of like, okay, when I post for three months straight, that's when I know I'm very serious about this and I'll start investing in some gear. And then you can like invest in a tripod or a ring light or a mic or something, whatever you feel during that creative process, what you feel you need, because you need to have that experience filming before you know the type of gear that you're going to need to upgrade with. Instead of just like, I need to buy gear because everybody has this mic. Like, you don't know if that's what you need until you create videos. That's, that's about it. Now, when it comes to YouTube, I know YouTube. is a little bit different. I will say though, when I started my YouTube channel, I was filming on my phone and editing on my phone. So it is possible to film and edit on your phone. Is it convenient and fun? Not always. So if you want more of like a camera recommendation, I think a good beginner camera is the Nikon Z30 Creator Kit. I have mine over there. That's my vlog camera. It's just like, I'm not very tech savvy. Like this whole setup looks super fancy. It's because my husband does it for me. I'm just a girl. And- don't do it. He owned a production company and he was a videographer. So he sets that up for me. I'm not very tech savvy. Nikon Z30 creator kit is like such a low intimidation camera. I love it as somebody who's not tech savvy. Now, if you want something that's a little more professional looking, my Sony camera is what I film all of my main channel videos on. So my Sony, I love her. She's so beautiful. Sony ZV-E10, I believe I have it in white and I'll link all my YouTube gear recommendations. recommendations down below. I have like the Amazon storefront. So I'll link all the YouTube gear that I use and also all the phone gear that I use. So I'll link that below. We talked gear for filming. Let's talk strategy for filming. My biggest tips here is to just film, just create, start creating. If you haven't done that step yet, when you have a good understanding of like ideation, coming up with good topics that you know will grab your audience's attention. Then I would say the next step is to focus on creating a good hook that will capture your audience's attention. And I have a whole video breaking down how to create viral hooks. So I'll link that video here as well. So many great resources for you, but basically you want to make sure in the first three seconds of your video, you have a good audible hook. What is going to capture somebody's attention if they were to hear your video, a visual hook, something to capture them with like what you're doing in those first few seconds and then textual. So text pops up on screen that captures somebody's attention. So if you could layer all three of those things together, then you're thinking through hooks really, really well to help you with like text hooks here. Here are just a few hooks that you could use at the beginning of your video. You could say these verbally, you could have it text on screen. These are listicle type hooks, like three things that blah, blah, blah, four ways to blah, blah, blah. So you just fill in the X with the number and then fill in the blank with whatever it is you're gonna post about. Here are some visual hooks, ways to capture somebody's attention visually, what you're doing physically in those first few seconds. And again, you're layering all of these at the same time. So while you say that verbal hook, also doing the visual hook. Now before we get into editing, I know I need to speed things up here. I just want to say if you've learned something new so far, be sure to give this video a thumbs up. And if you've learned two new things by the end of the video, consider subscribing. It's a free way to support my channel and encourages me to continue to make educational content like this for all of you and continue teaching content creators how to grow and make money being creators. And if you feel like something was missing from this video, something you wanted me to go deeper into, let me know in the comments. And I And I'd be more than happy to fill in any gaps that I may have left with this video. When it comes to editing, I love using CapCut. It is completely free. It works on phone and desktop. So you could use it for short form content. You could also use it when editing YouTube videos. That is main resource that I'll just plug there. When it comes to editing styles, just study your industry and figure out what works well in your industry. You will find your editing style over time. It just takes practice. So the more you create, the more comfortable you'll become, editing and the more you'll figure out what your unique style of editing is. Posting. Let's get some tips for posting. Start with one platform. I know that's controversial. Start with one platform because all the algorithms, they are similar, but they have different nuances. And if you're trying to like repurpose all the places and you're trying to grow multiple places, you're really not doing yourself justice or any of your platforms justice because your attention is split. You have 33% attention here, 33 here, 33 here, and you're trying to do all the things. But if you just picked one platform and you gave your 100%. attention to that platform. figuring out the algorithm there, figuring out your audience there, the type of content that works well there, you're going to grow so much faster. Again, this is an approach that I use with my students and it works so well for them. They're able to grow so much faster in a shorter amount of time on one platform and then they get to figure out their groove with it. And then once they have their groove, then they're able mentally, physically, emotionally to add another layer to it. You don't have to be everywhere all at once in the beginning. When it comes to number of posts, it doesn't matter. Obviously, the more you post, the more you grow, right? But my goal as a coach is always to make sure you're not getting burnt out and setting yourself up for like a realistic posting schedule because if you wanna be a full-time creator, you gotta do this full-time. You're doing this all day, every day, day in, day out. You know what I mean? So find a consistency that works for you, not comparing yourself to other people on the internet. For me, posting on Instagram, I do three times a week. That works for me. One of my competitors. posts like two, three times a day, Monday through Monday. You know what I mean? And I can't compare myself to their posting strategy, their posting cadence, because they have a different lifestyle than me. They're a completely different person than me, completely different makeup of energy than me. And three times a week works well for my capacity. That's all I can do. And that's okay. The more you go through the process of ideation, filming, editing, posting over and over and over, the more skilled and experienced you become as a content creator. So just keep going through those motions. Now... Now, I feel like I'm breezing through a lot of these steps really fast. So if you want a like step-by-step version of this video for how to become a full-time content creator in 12 months or less, I have a downloadable ebook that I will link down below for you. It's only a dollar with over 30 pages of goodness. It breaks down every step for you to take. It's interactive, so you can fill in the blanks. There's other resources linked. So if a step is like start an email list, there's a link to a YouTube video training teaching you step-by-step how to do that. This is just some of the features. feedback of people who have downloaded it so far. And this is what they've said about it. So if you don't want to keep coming back to this video every two weeks, just grab the guide. This is something you could save to your computer, print out, keep referencing back to 12 month creator plan. I'll leave it linked below. Step four, maintaining longevity. My goal as a coach, like I said before, is to help you build a creator career that's sustainable, not to help you create a one hit wonder viral video and then never see results from it. That's why longevity is so important. Becoming a full-time content creator is not a traditional job. It's harder to clock in and clock out mentally when documenting your life and living your life happens simultaneously. So if you want to be a content creator, you'll have to learn how to adapt content creation into your day to day life in a way that brings you joy and doesn't burn you out. Longevity and sustainability is the goal. Your favorite creators have figured out how to incorporate content creation into their day-to-day lifestyle already in a way that allows them to show up. up consistently and also ideally enjoy their life. The reality is becoming a full-time content creator, there will be times where you feel unmotivated, just like with any goal. You want to get fit. You start a new year's resolution. Those first few days, few weeks, maybe you're on this high and you're doing it. And then the motivation dips and you're like, I think I'm good. Like that happens pursuing being a content creator too. We all go through that dip where after that initial excitement fades, the reality. of everything else hits and maybe you're grinding, you're not seeing progress. So maybe you're feeling unmotivated, just like, okay, I'm putting in all this work. I feel like nothing is happening. That is the dip and getting through that dip is the key. Getting through that phase is the secret shortcut to success. You just have to keep powering through that and the success is on the other side. There will also be times where you're posting and things just aren't working. And in order to mean maintain longevity, you have to change up your strategy. You have to be willing to pivot and try new things. So not only do you have to like, okay, I'm going to keep grinding, keep grinding, but you also have to be evaluating your grind, asking yourself, have I been doing just the same thing over and over and over and over and over? That's why I'm not seeing results and I need to pivot. That's actually a very common reason when I audit my students'Instagram accounts, a common reason they're not seeing growth is because they've been doing the same thing over and over and over. And I'm like, you haven't changed up your strategy at all. You haven't explored all the other types of videos out there. For example, one gal was only doing like B-roll type videos where there's just a little video playing in the background with some like motivational text on screen, trending audio, five seconds long. That's it. That was the only style of video that she was creating for months. And she's like, I don't know why I'm not growing. And I'm like, well, have you tried any other types of videos? Have you tried talking to the camera? Have you tried lip syncing? Have you tried using the Instagram templates, you know? like what else have you tried and she hadn't tried anything else and being a creator this year and even moving forward it is so important to be flexible adaptable and curious about your own strategy and asking yourself do I need to tweak things do I need to improve things what needs to change how am I doing all of that now my final step for you is to watch this video next because YouTube thinks you'll like it or you could simply go to my channel type in any phrase you want into my channel search to find a specific video that you're looking for. Because I have almost 500 videos there, all teaching you how to be a successful content creator. So I'm very sure there are plenty of resources. Thank you so much for watching. I will see you in the next one. Follow your joy. Bye.

Step one, know the plan. You would be surprised how many people skip this step. The reason we start with this is because it's the obvious key to reverse engineering your path to success.

Like if you know you want to be a food taste tester, you know exactly the type of content to study and create instead of mindlessly following trends that aren't going to get you to where you want to be. So how do you gain this sort of clarity? How do you figure out what type of creator that you want to be if you don't already know, AKA your personal brand, if you will.

Before you start posting like crazy, know what your end goal is. You know, the whole like start with the end in mind. So take a moment to ask yourself. these questions.

What's the dream? Not what do you think you should do or have to do? No, what is the dream in a perfect world?

What do you want to be known for as a creator in the next three years? What path would you pursue if you knew you couldn't fail? If you have an answer, let me know in the comments. I'd love to create a space where we encourage each other on this journey.

And if you don't have an answer, that's fine. Feel free to pause this video, write those questions down and journal about them if you need. I try to make sure that that with every tip that I give you in this video, you will also get a takeaway or you'll be able to take action immediately after watching the video. So journaling could be that first action that you could take. But basically this is something that I start all of my students with, getting clarity on the goal.

Because with most of them, deep down, they know exactly what they want to do. But for some reason there's overthinking happening, or maybe they heard advice somewhere that contradicts their dreams. So they try to Try to change things up and do something else because they feel like they have to do something else.

But you have to trust that your gut desires and intuition will lead you to the right path. And if for some reason you still have no idea what sort of creator you want to be, you just know like deep down you have that desire to become a creator, you have to be somebody who is willing to take action without that clarity. Be willing to create content without having a plan in place.

I know this video is literally me breaking. down a plan, but if having some sort of perfect plan in place is literally the thing that is stopping you from creating and moving the needle forward, you have to be okay with not having a plan and just starting anyway. I feel like those are the two common creators that I see.

Usually it's students who they know exactly the creator they want to be, so creating that plan feels really natural to them. That's typically what I teach because again having a plan is great, it helps you reverse engineer your goals. other hand, there are students who genuinely have no idea how they want to show up, how they want to be a creator in the space.

And that's okay too. If you fall into that category, you have to understand that you will probably be a person who needs to take action before you gain clarity. Whereas this category, these are the people that they have clarity and it helps them take action. You might be in the other category where action will bring the clarity. All right, let's jump to step two, set yourself up for success.

this could be where you start to prepare your income stream. Again, this is another one that a lot of people skip because they want to get to like the good stuff, the growth hacks, the secret viral tips, and they just wanna blow up, go viral. But if you want to become a full-time creator, literally all you have to do is spend maybe a day doing this one thing, and it could save you a lot of time and money in the future.

And that's by either starting an email list or starting with creating a digital product of some sort. sort. Why is this important?

I'll talk a little bit about to the email list importance and also digital product importance. I had a student who came to me and she was like, I want to hit 10,000 followers on Instagram. And I was like, great, let's do it.

Let's start an email list. It took her less than a day to set up her freebie and email list. It was that simple.

What is a freebie? What is an email list? Basically a freebie is some sort of free offer that you give to your audience completely for free.

The only thing that you ask for an exchange is their email address. So as somebody downloads this free offer that you have for them, them. In exchange, you get a list of email contacts that you own, not controlled by any sort of algorithm, which is super powerful these days with all the craziness through social media, people's accounts getting hacked.

I had my YouTube channel hacked. You can watch that video here, how I got it back. You never know what can happen to your social platforms.

And that's why it's so important to start growing your email list from zero because as your account grows and as your social media grows, your email list also grows. So many people are fearful. With this whole TikTok ban stuff that is happening, there's so many creators who might be losing their platforms, or if they have an email list, they still have their community, a list of email contacts that they own, they could contact their people, let them know, hey, I'm gonna be on this platform, hey, I'm dropping a digital product is just such an important thing to have as a creator. And I know you might not see it now. But trust me, trust me, it's so simple.

to set up. I'll show you how to do that in a second. And then same thing with the digital product.

If you want to be a full-time content creator, if you're somebody who already knows the type of creator that you want to be, you can create a paid digital product of your choice. It could be an ebook guide. templates, mini trainings, mini course, or full course. Like you can make a digital product now, get that set up so that when you blow up, when you start creating content, when you start getting traffic to your profile, your link in bio, you're getting sales passively because you already set up the systems to make money.

I have my computer pulled up. I'm going to quickly show you how to create either a free resource or a paid digital product really quickly to help you come up with an idea for a free resource or a paid digital product. Simply look at your competitors. or your niche neighbors, see what sort of things they're offering.

What do they offer for free? What do they offer that's paid? Can you offer something similar and have your own twist to it?

So study people in your audience. If that doesn't work for you, I like to use Pinterest. You can literally go to Pinterest and type in your niche.

So if you are a travel creator, I usually do fitness as an example. I'm going to say, if you're a travel creator, you know, that's the niche you want to be. You want to figure out what sort of offer you can create in that niche.

Just go to Pinterest, type in travel, and then see what sort of suggestions happen below. I think travel essentials already. That would be a great free resource, a list of travel essentials. Let's see how other people phrase the title. Essential solo travel packing list.

Perfect. That's a great idea for a free resource. I am going to go to Canva. Canva is completely free.

I'm going to look up in their templates. They have all sorts of templates. If you want to make an ebook or a guide, literally just look up ebook.

e-guide. They have plenty of templates there, but because the free resource we're going to be creating is a travel checklist. I'm just going to see if they have already something made.

Oh, wonderful. Wow. All these are great. You're going to pick one that does not have the crown. The crown means that it's pro, so you'd have to pay to use it.

But these look like these are free versions. And then you just open it. You customize the template.

You change the branding to your branding. And of course you make sure it's your idea. You're going to actually maybe fill in the blanks.

maybe give suggestions, maybe add a cover page. That's the title page and intro to you page. You know, you're going to customize it to make it your own. When you're done, you're going to download it. You're going to save it as a PDF, and then you're going to download that PDF.

Now, how do you get it set up to actually offer to people? How do people download it? How do you get to that exchange of email?

How does somebody buy a digital product from you? I personally prefer to use Stan. Stan is what I recommend to all of my students, all creators. Everybody in the entire world literally loves Stan.

I've been obsessed with them for like two years now. I wish it existed when I started as a creator because it's the only tool you need to make money as a creator. It's fan-freaking-tastic. So you're gonna go to your store. You're going to scroll down.

add a product, and this is where you could choose the type of product that you're going to offer. If you are selling a digital product, choose digital product because here is where you could choose the price, how much to charge for it. If you are not selling and it's a free resource, then what you're going to choose is collect emails applications.

So this is where you could change the cover image, the title of your free resource, and under product, this is where you'll drop your file, publish. Boom shakalaka literally took you less than a day to create a product and upload it to a really low tech place for you to offer it to your audience. This video is sponsored by Stan, but I genuinely don't think I have to say much about them. I feel like their product sells itself. And as a creator, if you saw that screen recording, you're like, oh my gosh, that's awesome.

That's so valuable. Then definitely use them. I'll leave a link down below where you can set up your stand store. That is all I'll say because their product speaks for itself, period. Now I know I did go over those steps a little bit faster.

That's because I'm trying to get through all the steps to become a full-time creator. So if you want something a little bit more slow paced to show you like how to properly create, market, and sell a digital product. I'll leave a link to this video here.

It is a more in depth tutorial that teaches you all the steps that I breezed right over. So obviously this is a great step to do if you already have an idea of the type of creator that you want to be. And if you don't and you're like, I don't even know my niche, how am I gonna pick a product?

That's fine, skip this step if you really need to. Again, I don't want perfectionism mindset to stop you from moving the needle forward. But as soon as you have that aha moment where you've been creating and you're like, okay, I think I found my lane, come back and do this step. before popping off before going viral because that's really what's going to help you and your income grow together as a creator.

Step number three, let's talk about creating content. You know your vision. You now have a way to make money or keep track of your audience via email lists. So now it's time to start creating. There's a lot that goes into it.

creating, coming up with content ideas, scripting, outlining, filming, editing, getting the video ready to post and then posting it. So I just want to quickly in my own rapid fire, probably I yap a lot. So we'll see how rapid fire this is. of my biggest tips for creators who are looking to go full-time. Let's start with ideation.

When it comes to trying to come up with content ideas, there are so many ways to come up with different content ideas, but you have to understand that different posts will provide a different purpose. And if you want to grow, you need to focus on creating growth content. Now there are two main ways that I've tested.

My students have tested and have proven time and time again to help with growth. And those are SEO and utilizing your niche neighbors. There's a few reasons that SEO works wonders. SEO, if you don't know, stands for search engine optimization. That's a fancy schmancy definition, search engine optimization.

Basically, it just means you're gonna use the search engine on whatever platform you're trying to grow on as a tool to help you predict what your audience wants to see. You're just using the search engine as a tool. That's pretty much it. Let me show you how to do it very, very simply.

If I'm on YouTube and I wanna grow on YouTube, you could do this on any platform. It doesn't have to just be YouTube. But if I wanna make yoga.

videos, switched niches. First I was in travel, now I'm in yoga. If I want to make yoga videos, all I have to do is type in yoga.

Again, we kind of did this already with Pinterest, but now we're doing it for coming up with content ideas. And this is going to tell us what the top searches are on YouTube right now. What are people searching for when it comes to yoga?

This. So I'm just scanning these suggested results to see if there's anything that makes sense for me to post. Again, we want to make sure it makes sense with our goals and who we want to be as creators.

So yoga for beginners. Love that. That is a really good idea. Yoga for toddlers, interesting. I'm just gonna type in a random letter and see what the rest of the suggested results are.

Yoga stretch, full body stretch, that's a good idea. So yoga full body, that could be a video. Yoga sculpting, strength building with yoga, that could be another video. So all these are video suggestions. Same thing with TikTok.

If I go here and I type in running, anything that is suggested, video idea. It's telling us what our audience wants to see right now. And that's why following this method could help us increase views because your audience wants to see this.

So you're just going to make a video on it. Boom, shakalaka. Not only are you pleasing your audience, but you're also pleasing the algorithm. Now, if you really want to take it a step further, you can create an entire series around one of these phrases. So these phrases, if you want to get fancy, these are keyword phrases.

And these are phrases that the algorithm actually studies to figure out who to put your content out to. So it'd be cool if you did like 20 day running challenge series for beginners or like 10 days of top running tips for beginners. Boom.

Then you have a series of 10 videos that are all about running for beginners. And you're really nailing that phrase over and over. So the algorithm knows the type of content you're creating. And if one of those videos pops off, the rest of the series has a really great chance to grow.

The other way to come up with post ideas that you know will perform well is by analyzing your competitors or niche neighbors. Basically, you're just going to go to that person's profile and you're going to look at two things that you're going to look at their latest viral post. And when I say... viral, I just mean viral for them. What posts are performing above their average?

So I'm just scrolling, looking to see what his average is. It looks like this one performed well above his average. Scrolling down, even like anything over 20,000 looks like it would be a viral for him. So this one, this one, this one, this one, this one's pretty close. So I'm going to study those videos.

I'm going to figure out why did they blow up? Was it the topic? Was it the hook?

How it was filmed? Let me see his caption. What is he talking about?

talking about how to breathe while running. So maybe I want to create a video similar giving tips for how to breathe while running. This one obviously worked well because he's also running at the beginning, hooking people into the video, how to start running.

That's a great one for beginners. So just look at your competitors, see what is performing well recently for them. Second thing that you could look at is sort by popular.

You could do this on TikTok and YouTube. This filter is not available on Instagram, I don't think. So you just have to stalk the person and see what is like their most viral videos.

And based off of their most popular ones, I would try to adapt my own strategy to a recent popular one. If it was popular and this is like a 10 year old video or like a five year old video, okay. It's within the past year. This could be something that I would want to lean into, try to recreate on my own.

When it comes to filming, let's talk about gear first and then strategy. For gear, you really don't need anything fancy. Anytime I film short form content, 95% of the time when I'm filming short form content, I'm just using my phone. and the microphone that came with my phone.

You know, like I'm not using a fancy mic, I'm not using a fancy camera or anything. Most of the time, I'm just using my phone. I've had three people in the last month, literally the last 30 days, come to me and be like, all right, I wanna take this content. creation thing seriously. What microphone should I buy?

What mic goes well with my phone? And I'm like, honestly, your phone mic is pretty fine. Or if you have like Apple headphones for voiceover, that works great. Instead, what I encourage students to do, start with what you have. And then set a goal for yourself of like, okay, when I post for three months straight, that's when I know I'm very serious about this and I'll start investing in some gear.

And then you can like invest in a tripod or a ring light or a mic or something, whatever you feel during that creative process, what you feel you need, because you need to have that experience filming before you know the type of gear that you're going to need to upgrade with. Instead of just like, I need to buy gear because everybody has this mic. Like, you don't know if that's what you need until you create videos.

That's, that's about it. Now, when it comes to YouTube, I know YouTube. is a little bit different. I will say though, when I started my YouTube channel, I was filming on my phone and editing on my phone.

So it is possible to film and edit on your phone. Is it convenient and fun? Not always.

So if you want more of like a camera recommendation, I think a good beginner camera is the Nikon Z30 Creator Kit. I have mine over there. That's my vlog camera. It's just like, I'm not very tech savvy. Like this whole setup looks super fancy.

It's because my husband does it for me. I'm just a girl. And- don't do it. He owned a production company and he was a videographer. So he sets that up for me.

I'm not very tech savvy. Nikon Z30 creator kit is like such a low intimidation camera. I love it as somebody who's not tech savvy.

Now, if you want something that's a little more professional looking, my Sony camera is what I film all of my main channel videos on. So my Sony, I love her. She's so beautiful.

Sony ZV-E10, I believe I have it in white and I'll link all my YouTube gear recommendations. recommendations down below. I have like the Amazon storefront. So I'll link all the YouTube gear that I use and also all the phone gear that I use. So I'll link that below.

We talked gear for filming. Let's talk strategy for filming. My biggest tips here is to just film, just create, start creating.

If you haven't done that step yet, when you have a good understanding of like ideation, coming up with good topics that you know will grab your audience's attention. Then I would say the next step is to focus on creating a good hook that will capture your audience's attention. And I have a whole video breaking down how to create viral hooks.

So I'll link that video here as well. So many great resources for you, but basically you want to make sure in the first three seconds of your video, you have a good audible hook. What is going to capture somebody's attention if they were to hear your video, a visual hook, something to capture them with like what you're doing in those first few seconds and then textual.

So text pops up on screen that captures somebody's attention. So if you could layer all three of those things together, then you're thinking through hooks really, really well to help you with like text hooks here. Here are just a few hooks that you could use at the beginning of your video.

You could say these verbally, you could have it text on screen. These are listicle type hooks, like three things that blah, blah, blah, four ways to blah, blah, blah. So you just fill in the X with the number and then fill in the blank with whatever it is you're gonna post about. Here are some visual hooks, ways to capture somebody's attention visually, what you're doing physically in those first few seconds. And again, you're layering all of these at the same time.

So while you say that verbal hook, also doing the visual hook. Now before we get into editing, I know I need to speed things up here. I just want to say if you've learned something new so far, be sure to give this video a thumbs up.

And if you've learned two new things by the end of the video, consider subscribing. It's a free way to support my channel and encourages me to continue to make educational content like this for all of you and continue teaching content creators how to grow and make money being creators. And if you feel like something was missing from this video, something you wanted me to go deeper into, let me know in the comments. And I And I'd be more than happy to fill in any gaps that I may have left with this video. When it comes to editing, I love using CapCut.

It is completely free. It works on phone and desktop. So you could use it for short form content. You could also use it when editing YouTube videos. That is main resource that I'll just plug there.

When it comes to editing styles, just study your industry and figure out what works well in your industry. You will find your editing style over time. It just takes practice. So the more you create, the more comfortable you'll become, editing and the more you'll figure out what your unique style of editing is. Posting.

Let's get some tips for posting. Start with one platform. I know that's controversial. Start with one platform because all the algorithms, they are similar, but they have different nuances.

And if you're trying to like repurpose all the places and you're trying to grow multiple places, you're really not doing yourself justice or any of your platforms justice because your attention is split. You have 33% attention here, 33 here, 33 here, and you're trying to do all the things. But if you just picked one platform and you gave your 100%.

attention to that platform. figuring out the algorithm there, figuring out your audience there, the type of content that works well there, you're going to grow so much faster. Again, this is an approach that I use with my students and it works so well for them.

They're able to grow so much faster in a shorter amount of time on one platform and then they get to figure out their groove with it. And then once they have their groove, then they're able mentally, physically, emotionally to add another layer to it. You don't have to be everywhere all at once in the beginning. When it comes to number of posts, it doesn't matter. Obviously, the more you post, the more you grow, right?

But my goal as a coach is always to make sure you're not getting burnt out and setting yourself up for like a realistic posting schedule because if you wanna be a full-time creator, you gotta do this full-time. You're doing this all day, every day, day in, day out. You know what I mean?

So find a consistency that works for you, not comparing yourself to other people on the internet. For me, posting on Instagram, I do three times a week. That works for me.

One of my competitors. posts like two, three times a day, Monday through Monday. You know what I mean? And I can't compare myself to their posting strategy, their posting cadence, because they have a different lifestyle than me. They're a completely different person than me, completely different makeup of energy than me.

And three times a week works well for my capacity. That's all I can do. And that's okay.

The more you go through the process of ideation, filming, editing, posting over and over and over, the more skilled and experienced you become as a content creator. So just keep going through those motions. Now...

Now, I feel like I'm breezing through a lot of these steps really fast. So if you want a like step-by-step version of this video for how to become a full-time content creator in 12 months or less, I have a downloadable ebook that I will link down below for you. It's only a dollar with over 30 pages of goodness.

It breaks down every step for you to take. It's interactive, so you can fill in the blanks. There's other resources linked.

So if a step is like start an email list, there's a link to a YouTube video training teaching you step-by-step how to do that. This is just some of the features. feedback of people who have downloaded it so far.

And this is what they've said about it. So if you don't want to keep coming back to this video every two weeks, just grab the guide. This is something you could save to your computer, print out, keep referencing back to 12 month creator plan.

I'll leave it linked below. Step four, maintaining longevity. My goal as a coach, like I said before, is to help you build a creator career that's sustainable, not to help you create a one hit wonder viral video and then never see results from it.

That's why longevity is so important. Becoming a full-time content creator is not a traditional job. It's harder to clock in and clock out mentally when documenting your life and living your life happens simultaneously.

So if you want to be a content creator, you'll have to learn how to adapt content creation into your day to day life in a way that brings you joy and doesn't burn you out. Longevity and sustainability is the goal. Your favorite creators have figured out how to incorporate content creation into their day-to-day lifestyle already in a way that allows them to show up. up consistently and also ideally enjoy their life.

The reality is becoming a full-time content creator, there will be times where you feel unmotivated, just like with any goal. You want to get fit. You start a new year's resolution.

Those first few days, few weeks, maybe you're on this high and you're doing it. And then the motivation dips and you're like, I think I'm good. Like that happens pursuing being a content creator too. We all go through that dip where after that initial excitement fades, the reality.

of everything else hits and maybe you're grinding, you're not seeing progress. So maybe you're feeling unmotivated, just like, okay, I'm putting in all this work. I feel like nothing is happening. That is the dip and getting through that dip is the key.

Getting through that phase is the secret shortcut to success. You just have to keep powering through that and the success is on the other side. There will also be times where you're posting and things just aren't working. And in order to mean maintain longevity, you have to change up your strategy. You have to be willing to pivot and try new things.

So not only do you have to like, okay, I'm going to keep grinding, keep grinding, but you also have to be evaluating your grind, asking yourself, have I been doing just the same thing over and over and over and over and over? That's why I'm not seeing results and I need to pivot. That's actually a very common reason when I audit my students'Instagram accounts, a common reason they're not seeing growth is because they've been doing the same thing over and over and over.

And I'm like, you haven't changed up your strategy at all. You haven't explored all the other types of videos out there. For example, one gal was only doing like B-roll type videos where there's just a little video playing in the background with some like motivational text on screen, trending audio, five seconds long.

That's it. That was the only style of video that she was creating for months. And she's like, I don't know why I'm not growing. And I'm like, well, have you tried any other types of videos? Have you tried talking to the camera?

Have you tried lip syncing? Have you tried using the Instagram templates, you know? like what else have you tried and she hadn't tried anything else and being a creator this year and even moving forward it is so important to be flexible adaptable and curious about your own strategy and asking yourself do I need to tweak things do I need to improve things what needs to change how am I doing all of that now my final step for you is to watch this video next because YouTube thinks you'll like it or you could simply go to my channel type in any phrase you want into my channel search to find a specific video that you're looking for.

Because I have almost 500 videos there, all teaching you how to be a successful content creator. So I'm very sure there are plenty of resources. Thank you so much for watching.

I will see you in the next one. Follow your joy. Bye.

Transcript for:Guide to Becoming a Full-Time Content Creator

Transcript for:
Guide to Becoming a Full-Time Content Creator